


How the Mighty are Fallen

by Alipeeps



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Episode 2x05 - Son of the Fallen, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Original Female Character - Freeform, Other, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4567491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alipeeps/pseuds/Alipeeps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exhausted and bleeding after escaping Julian's trap, Michael collapses in an abandoned storeroom in New Delphi. But he's not the only one hiding out in the city's deserted corridors. (Episode tag to 2x05 - Son of the Fallen)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I can't leave a whump episode untagged and I have soooo many thoughts and feels about poor Michael collapsing, bloody and hurting, in an abandoned storeroom... and what will happen from there. And I'm sure the show will probably skip over the whump and recovery and have him back to his usual stoical self in the next ep but that's not good enough for me, no siree! :D
> 
> So this is my imagining of what might have happened to Michael after the end of the episode (and kind of turned into a longer-than planned OC exploration of the lower classes of New Delphi citizenry but hey, I am incapable of plonking a plotline down without grounding it with some worldbuilding. Gah. Sucks to be me). 
> 
> Anyway, I desperately wanted to get at least the first coupla chapters of this posted before the next episode airs cos it's obviously going to be made 100% non-canon by the events of ep 6 so here it is. :D

Michael had no idea where he was going. His only thought as he escaped from Julian’s trap was to get away, but the city was still foreign to him and within a couple of turns he’d found himself in an unfamiliar sector, unsure even of the way back to where he’d come from. His head was spinning, messing with his sense of direction, and his legs trembled under him. He’d used up most of his strength escaping the net. The Empyrean steel barbs digging into his flesh were like a poison, preventing his blood from clotting, slowing his healing down to almost nothing, leeching his strength. He’d put everything he had into one last burst of energy, enough to cut through the incapacitating net, push to his feet and stagger from the room, but little else. With every step he could feel himself growing weaker. He was bleeding from a hundred tiny cuts and it would take hours for his immune system to recover and his blood to begin to clot.

He would heal from this, but it would take time, and rest. His body was pushed to its limits, and stumbling blindly through unfamiliar corridors was only taxing it further, his pounding heart pumping more and more blood to every stinging, aching wound. He had to find somewhere to hide, somewhere to heal. 

This part of the city was still empty of people, its citizens having fled from he and Gabriel’s rampage. But that wouldn’t last. He tried to move away from where he remembered the main market area being, following a twisting, chaotic network of corridors, taking those that seemed darkest and least used. He was shivering now, breathing heavily, his limbs felt leaden.

There. Plastic sheeting, dirty, untouched. He pushed it aside and staggered into a storage area of sorts; bare metal mesh walls, its contents covered in dust sheets, seemingly abandoned. He stumbled, nearly falling, bloodied hands scrabbling for purchase. He pushed through a doorway, his breaths coming ragged and gasping now, pain thrumming through his body.

This would do. This would have to do. He couldn’t take another step. He was barely aware of falling as his legs finally gave way under him, landing him slumped against a plastic-sheeted wall. He tried to curl in on himself as he gasped for breath, but his body wouldn’t obey his commands. He let his head fall back as a wave of dizziness sent him reeling. He was so tired. So tired. His last thought, as his eyes slid shut, was of the boy he’d tried so hard to save, had sworn to protect... and how he could have failed him so completely.


	2. Chapter 2

New Delphi was a city based on trade... but not all its inhabitants had anything worth trading. If you had no worthwhile goods to trade, life could be hard in the underground city. If you had a useful skill, you could trade your services. But for many the only thing they had to trade was themselves. If you were lucky that meant indentured servitude to one of the richer residents. But all too often, for women in particular, it meant trading your body. And then there were those among the city’s underclass who traded their bodies in a different, more permanent, way. People would go missing, sometimes for days, sometimes forever. And those that did return were forever changed, a different being looking out through eyes turned inky black.

Thus far Alice had managed to avoid all of those unpleasant options, though it was getting harder by the day to eke out a living on the fringes of New Delphi society. She scavenged where she could, rooting through poorly secured storerooms for small items she could trade, knowing always that if she were caught, it’d be her body walking around New Delphi with black eyes and veined skin.

The unprecedented higher angel attack on the city offered an opportunity too good to miss. Most of the citizens fled the communal areas in terror, barricading themselves into residences. But not Alice. She knew every hiding place, every unlocked door, every grubby, un-noticed corner of the city and the moment the alarms went off and the screams began, she ducked out of the way of the panicked crowds and squeezed through a barely open doorway into an abandoned corridor. She crouched down in the darkness, listening to the screams and cries of people falling from high above, the wet sound of flesh hitting concrete, her heart pounding in her chest, until finally all went quiet. Even the alarm stopped blaring. 

When she dared to peek out through the sliver of open doorway, the marketplace was deserted, still. Bodies littered the ground. She swallowed, debating whether it was safe to sneak out, when she heard voices. She froze, listening hard. Too far away for her to make out the words, they sounded tense, angry. And then they were gone.

She waited. Long, tense moments, peering out through the gap, searching for any sign of movement. 

Nothing. 

Only bodies lying still and bloody. 

Okay, time to go. Before everybody else decided the danger was past and came back to protect their property. Quietly, hardly daring to breathe, she slipped through the gap and out into the abandoned marketplace. She stuck to the edges of the cavernous space, moving in quick bursts to duck behind stacked boxes and rusted machinery, slipping into open doorways to grab whatever small, tradeable items she could stash in her pack, taking a moment to rest and catch her breath, peering around the doorframe to watch for any signs of life in the market.

The real high value items were traded in the central hub, a system of pulleys dropping goods right down into the centre of the circular array of bazaars and traders. But it was suicide to try and head there; the empty, corpse-strewn width of the main market floor lay between Alice and the hub. Besides, it would arouse too much suspicion if she suddenly started trading high-end goods. Questions would inevitably be asked. And nothing good would come of that. So she stuck to scavenging around the edges of the market, in abandoned shops and unsecured storage areas.

She was working her way around the outer edge of the market when a voice she knew all too well called out her name. _Oh shit_. Julian had found her.

Panicked, she ducked into a nearby doorway. It was a leatherwork shop, the owner’s tools still lying abandoned where he’d dropped them in his panic to escape. Looking around quickly, she stuffed her pack out of sight behind a stack of boxes; if Julian couldn’t prove she’d been stealing, she might stand a chance. 

She peered anxiously out the doorway, expecting to find Julian and his men coming after her. To her surprise, New Delphi’s leader was some distance away and paying no attention to her at all. In fact, he had his back to her as he talked to a familiar face; the new arrival, the stranger who’d been hanging around with Julian’s crowd the last few days. She watched as armed guards surrounded the young man, listened with alarm as Julian talked about there being not higher angels but _archangels_ in the city. Two of them. 

She ducked back inside the shop, huddling in a corner, her back to the wall. Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea. _Two archangels_. Maybe she should have just run and hid like everyone else. Maybe it wasn’t too late. If she could just sneak past Julian and his men she could get out of the marketplace, take Corridor Two over to the habitation sector... yeah, right. She grimaced.

It had gone quiet out in the marketplace. Maybe they’d gone? 

She crawled over to the doorway and risked a quick glance out. It looked empty. No sign of Julian and his goons. No sign of the blonde stranger. She hurriedly grabbed her pack from where she’d stashed it and took one last careful look around the marketplace. And froze. It wasn’t empty. High up, on top of the hub, a lone figure stood almost perfectly still. So still she’d almost not noticed them at all. They had their back to her and all she could make out was that they were tall and wearing a long black coat, their head hidden beneath a black hood. She swallowed. Was that... an archangel?

Even as she hesitated in the doorway, wondering what to do, there was a sudden noise from beyond the hub, the pounding of running feet, and the solitary figure turned towards it and then abruptly dropped from sight, moving so quickly she almost wondered if she had imagined it being there at all.

A moment later an alarm blared briefly. System lockdown? What the hell did that mean?

She waited, crouched in place, scanning the marketplace for any sign of movement, expecting the tall figure to reappear. But everything was still, silent. The thought of venturing back out there made her heart race... but she couldn’t stay here. Eventually, someone would find her; either the shopkeeper returning to his business or an archangel bent on wiping out the city. Either way would not end well for her. Her best bet, she decided, was to get clear of the marketplace. She’d head for some of the less well-used storage areas, find some place to hole up, maybe pick up a few more tradeable items along the way.

Biting her lip, she slipped out of the doorway and into the empty marketplace. She kept to the shadows, her back to the wall and her attention on the open space, scanning for any signs of life, any movement in the cavernous room. Slowly, she worked her way around to a narrow opening that she knew led to a rarely-used sector of the city. With a sigh of relief, she slipped through the doorway and into the corridor beyond. She still kept her back to the wall as she moved away from the marketplace, looking frequently back the way she’d come to make sure it was still clear. When the corridor took a sharp turn to the left, she took one last glance over her shoulder, before turning the corner and breaking into a run, wanting only to put some space between herself and whatever the hell was going on between Julian and the archangels.

She ran and ran, one corridor connecting into another and then another, until her surroundings got darker and shabbier, the area’s lack of use showing in increasing patches of gloom where worn-out bulbs had never been replaced, those lights that still worked flickering unreliably.

She took a moment to catch her breath and took a too-brief drink from her canteen. Water was a precious resource in the underground city and, like everything else, one the less fortunate citizens had limited access to.

She looked around as she stashed her canteen. The storerooms here were filled mostly with junk; stuff that no-one cared about or needed. One the one hand, that meant very little security – most of the storerooms weren’t locked, some didn’t even have doors. On the other hand, that was because there was very little here worth stealing.

That didn’t mean there was nothing she could make use of though... one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. She slipped into a couple of storage spaces, jimmying a lock on one that was actually secured, and managed to add a couple more items to her collection. She was about to slip back out into the corridor when there was a sudden pounding of feet in the distance. She ducked back into the storeroom and slid the door shut, crouching in the dark, barely daring to breathe. 

Guttural, rasping, angel voices shouted back and forth, echoing off the concrete walls, and the sound of running feet receded... except for one set of heavy boots that stomped down the corridor towards where Alice hid. She held her breath as they approached, the runner’s breath rasping, leather clothes creaking. The footsteps pounded past the door and began to fade, and Alice breathed out in relief. She carefully slid the door open and risked peeking out, just in time to see the leather-coated angel, automatic rifle in his hands, turn a corner and disappear from sight. One of Julian’s men. And it seemed like they were searching the city for someone. She was pretty sure it wasn’t her – there seemed to be something big going down with Julian and the blonde stranger, something to do with the archangels – but better safe than sorry. 

She crept out of the storage room and took an intersecting corridor that led in the opposite direction than that taken by the angel. A couple more twists and turns and narrow corridors and she felt confident that she was far enough away that Julian’s search party wasn’t going to stumble across her. This area of the city was almost abandoned... no-one ever came down here. The rooms and corridors were piled high with junk and empty boxes, most of them covered in dustsheets or plastic sheeting.

There was nothing here worth stealing but it would make a great place to hide out until the archangel attack was over and things got back to normal in the city. She pushed aside some plastic sheeting covering the entrance to a disused storage room and slipped inside. It was piled high with boxes under tarpaulins... not much space in which to wait out the siege. But it looked like there was a space towards the back so she squeezed past the boxes and through a narrow doorway - and stopped abruptly.

A body lay on the floor, huddled into the corner. For a moment she thought it was just another of New Delphi’s unfortunates, one of the many lost souls that the city seemed to swallow whole, their life ending on the dirty floor of an abandoned storage room, nobody ever even missing them. She cautiously moved closer, some part of her that the city had yet to tarnish needing to be certain that the poor soul was beyond her help. 

The first thing she noticed was the blood; the hands cradled to the body’s chest were thick and... and sticky with it. It was still fresh, she realised. And yes, there was faint movement, the chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. He was alive. And it was a he; she could see his face now, tipped back against the plastic sheeted wall, his eyes closed, his lips softly parted. He was dressed in layers of black, his clothing a lot finer than her own. And every inch of exposed skin, from his hands, to his face and neck, was dotted and smeared with blood. Biting her lip, she leaned over him, trying to see where all the blood had come from. Was it even his? She grimaced as she saw an ugly gash along his cheek, still sluggishly oozing blood, and as she looked closer she could see little cuts everywhere... around his neck, over his collarbone, on his hands. 

She stood back. What had happened to him? Was this... had an archangel done this? Or Julian? It wouldn’t be the first time the New Delphi leader’s “discipline” of his citizens had leaned towards violence.

She was wondering what to do, whether to risk getting involved or not, when the man stirred sluggishly, his face creasing into a frown of pain. He muttered something under his breath and, curious, she leaned closer again, straining to her what he was saying.  
He shuddered, his eyelids fluttering briefly, and mumbled again.... “Alice...”

Startled, she jolted upright, stumbling backwards away from the stranger who, impossibly, knew her name. She bumped into the steel mesh wall of the storage room, making it rattle, and before she could even think about bolting, the stranger jerked, gasping in a ragged breath, and she found herself pinned in place by a pair of intensely blue eyes.


End file.
